XBMC Finds a Home on Your Mac

Mac OS X only: Whether or not you've already transformed your old Xbox into a media center with Xbox Media Center (XBMC), chances are you've seen what a killer media center application XBMC is. If you've ever wished you could bring the same saucy media center interface to your Mac, your wishes are finally being answered with XBMC for Mac. That's right, the Unix app for the original Xbox has been ported to Macs, and though it's only the 0.1 version, it already performs amazingly. If you're already a Front Row/Apple TV lover, you're probably wondering what the point of XBMC on your Mac is. Well, the main reasons you may way to run XBMC (lifted from the 9 to 5 Mac interview) are:

Resolutions up to, including and even surpassing 1080P (AppleTV is currently at 720P)

DTS/AC3 passthrough (which is great for playing DVD/BluRay/HD-DVD sourced audio). This means if you have a surround receiver you can have it decode multichannel audio

Almost unlimited video and audio format support since we can play anything ffmpeg supports

A great virtual file system layer with support for protocols like UPnP

There is a great looking weather item that puts very useful info in front of your eyes.

Since it is an open platform, the sky really is the limit, things like Youtube browsers, RSS readers, visualizers, MAME/Other emulators are all being integrated seemlessly. Heck, one could even imagine running an Xbox emulator on my quad-core machine...now that would bring us full circle!

Sound compelling enough? XBMC for Mac is still in its very early stages, but if you're excited about its potential, it's definitely worth a download.

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